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THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE 
ON 


FOREIGN RELATIONS 


APRIL 2, 1917, 











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PRESENTED 
BY 


BARNES- AMES COMPANY 


GRAIN COMMISSION 
AND 
SHIPPING MERCHANTS 


i 


Produce Exchange Board of Trade 
New York City Duluth. Minn. 


PRESIDENT WILSON’S MESSAGE 


OOSEUREDCEOSEOE 


Delivered at the Joint Session of Congress 
April 2, 1917. 


I have called the Congress into extraordi- 
nary session, because there are serious, very 
serious choices of policy to be made, and made 
immediately, which it was neither right nor 
constitutionally permissible that I should as- 
sume the responsibility of making. 


On the 3d of February last I officially laid 
before you the extraordinary announcement 
of the Imperial German Government that on 
and after the first day of February it was its 
purpose to put aside all restraints of law or 
of humanity and use its submarines to sink 
every vessel that sought to approach either 
the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the 
western coasts of Europe or any of the ports 
controlled by the enemies of Germany within 
the Mediterranean. 


That had seemed to be the object of the Ger- 
man submarine warfare earlier in the war, but 
since April of last year the Imperial Govern- 
ment had somewhat restrained the com- 
manders of its undersea craft in conformity 
with its promise then given to us that pas- 
senger boats should not be sunk, and that due 
warning would be given to all other vessels 


which its submarines might seek to destroy, 
when no resistance was offered or escape 
attempted, and care taken that their crews 
were given at least a fair chance to save their 
lives in their open boats. 


Cruel and Unmanly Business. 


The precautions taken were meagre and hap- 
hazard enough, as was proved in distressing 
instance after instance in the progress of the 
cruel and unmanly business, but a certain de- 
eree of restraint was observed. 


The new policy has swept every restriction 
aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their 
flag, their character, their cargo, their destina- 
tion, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent 
to the bottom without warning, and without’ 
thought of help or mercy for those on board, 
the vessels of friendly neutrals along with 
those of belligerents, even hospital ships and 
ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved 
and stricken people of Belgium, though the 
latter were provided with safe conduct through 
the prescribed areas by the German Govern- 
ment itself, and were distinguished by unmis- 
takable marks of identity, have been sunk with 
the same reckless lack of compassion or of 
principle. 


I was for a little while unable to believe 
that such things would in fact be done by any 
government that had hitherto subscribed to 
the humane practices of civilized nations. In- 
ternational law had its origin in the attempt 
to set up some law, which would be respected 





and observed upon the seas, where no nation 
had right of dominion and where lay the free 
highways of the world. By painful stage after 
stage has that law been built up with meagre 
enough results, indeed, after all was accom- 
plished that could be accomplished, but always 
with a clear view, at least, of what the heart 
and conscience of mankind demanded. 


Because It Had No Weapons. 


This minimum of right the German Govern- 
ment has swept aside under the plea of retalia- 
tion and necessity, and because it had no 
weapons which it could use at sea except these, 
which it is impossible to employ as it is em- 
ploying them without throwing to the winds 
all scruples of humanity or of respect for the 
understandings that were supposed to underlie 
the intercourse of the world. 


I am not thinking of the loss of property 
involved, immense and serious as that is, but 
only of the wanton and wholesale destruction 
of the lives of non-combatants, men, women 
and children, engaged in pursuits which have 
always, even in the darkest periods of modern 
history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. 
Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful 
and innocent people cannot be. 


The present German warfare against com- 
merce is a warfare against mankind. It is a 
war against all nations. American ships have 
been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which 
it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but 
the ships and people of other neutral and 


friendly nations have been sunk and over- 
whelmed in the waters in the same way. There 
has been no discrimination. The challenge is 
to all mankind. Each nation must decide for 
itself how it will meet it. 


Our Motive Not Revenge. 


The choice we make for ourselves must be 
made with a moderation of counsel and a tem- 
perateness of judgment befitting our character 
and our motives as a nation. We must put 
excited feeling away. Our motive will not be 
revenge or the victorious assertion of the 
physical might of the nation, but only the 
vindication of right, of human right, of which 
we are only a single champion. 


When I addressed the Congress on the 26th 
of February last I thought that it would suffice 
to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right 
to use the seas against unlawful interference, 
our right to keep our people safe against un- 
lawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now 
appears, is impracticable. Because submarines 
are in effect outlaws when used as the German 
submarines have been used against merchant 
shipping, it is impossible to defend ships 
against their attacks as the law of nations has 
assumed that merchantmen would defend 
themselves against privateers or cruisers, 
visible craft, giving chase upon the open sea. 
It is common prudence in such circumstances, 
grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to destroy 
them before they have shown their own in- 
tention. They must be dealt with upon sight, 
if dealt with at all. 





The German Government denies the right 
of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas 
of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the 
defense of rights which no modern publicist 
has ever before questioned their right to de- 
fend. 


Armed Neutrality Ineffectual. 


The intimation is conveyed that the armed 
guards which we have placed on our merchant 
ships will be treated as beyond the pale of 
law and subject to be dealt with as pirates 
would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual 
enough at best; in such circumstances and in 
the face of such pretensions it is worse than 
ineffectual—it is likely at once to produce 
what it was meant to prevent; it is practically 
certain to draw us into the war without either 
the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. 

There is one choice we cannot make, we are 
incapable of making; we will not choose the 
path of submission and suffer the most sacred 
rights of our nation and our people to be 
ignored or violated. The wrongs against which 
we now array ourselves are not common 
wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human 
life. 


President Wilson’s Advice. 


With a profound sense of the solemn and 
even tragical character of the step I am taking 
and of the graver responsibilities which it in- 
volves, but in unhesitating obedience to what 
I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that 
the Congress declare the recent course of the 
Imperial German Government to be in fact 


nothing less than war against the Government 
and people of the United States; that it form- 
ally accept the status of belligerent which has 
thus been thrust upon it and that it take im- 
mediate steps not only to put the country in 
a more thorough state of defense, but also to 
exert all its power and employ all the resources 
to bring the Government of the German Em- 
pire to terms and end the war. 


What this will involve is clear. It will in- 
volve the utmost practicable co-operation in 
counsel and action with the governments now 
at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, 
the extension to those governments of the 
most liberal financial credits, in order that our 
resources may, so far as possible, be added to 
theirs. It will involve the organization and 
mobilization of all the material resources of 
the country to supply the materials of war 
and serve the incidental needs of the nation 
in the most abundant and yet the most 
economical and efficient way possible. It will 
involve the immediate full equipment of the 
navy in all respects, but particularly in supply- 
ing it with the best means of dealing with the 
enemy’s submarines. 


It will involve the immediate addition to the 
armed forces of the United States already pro- 
vided for by law in case of war, at least 500,000 
men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen 
upon the principle of universal liability to ser- 
vice, and also the authorization of subsequent 
additional increments of equal force so soon as 
they may be needed and can be handled in 
training. 





To Pay By Taxation. 


It will involve also, of course, the granting 
of adequate credits to the Government, sus- 
tained I hope, so far as they can equitably be 
sustained by the present generation, by well 
conceived taxation. 


I say sustained so far as may be equitable 
by taxation because it seems to me that it 
would be most unwise to base the credits which 
will now be necessary, entirely on money bor- 
rowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully 
urge, to protect our people, so far as we may, 
against the very serious hardships and evils 
which would be likely to arise out of the infla- 
tion which would be produced by vast loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which these 
things are to be accomplished we should keep 
constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering 
as little as possible in our own preparation and 
in the equipment of our own military forces 
with the duty—for it will be a very practical 
duty—of supplying the nations already at war 
with Germany with the materials which they 
can obtain only from us or by our assistance. 
They are in the field and we should help them 
in every way to be effective there. 


Our Motives and Objects. 


I shall take the liberty of suggesting, 
through the several executive departments of 
the Government for the consideration of your 
committees, measures for the accomplishment 
of the several objects I have mentioned. I 
hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with 
them as having been framed after very care- 


ful thought by the branch of the Government 
upon which the responsibility of conducting 
the war and safeguarding the nation will most 
directly fall. 


While we do these things, these deeply 
momentous things, let us be very clear, and 
make very clear to all the world what our mo- 
tives and objects are. My own thought has 
not been driven from its habitual and normal 
course by the unhappy events of the last two 
months, and I do not believe that the thought » 
of the nation has been altered or clouded by 
them. 


I have exactly the same thing in mind now 
that I had in mind when I addressed the Sen- 
ate on the 22d of January last, the same that 
I had in mind when I addressed the Congress 
on the 3d of February and on the 26th of 
February. Our object now, as then, is to vindi- 
cate the principles of peace and justice in the 
life of the world as against seifish and auto- 
cratic power and to set up among the really 
free and self-governed peoples of the world 
such a concert of purpose and of action as 
will henceforth insure the observance of those 
principles. 


Neutrality Not Feasible. 


Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable 
where the peace of the world is involved and 
the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to 
that peace and freedom lies in the existence 
of autocratic governments backed by organ- 
ized force which is controlled wholly by their 





will, not by the will of their people. We have 
seen the last of neutrality in such circum- 
stances. 


We are at the beginning of an age in which 
it will be insisted that the same standards of 
conduct and of responsibility for wrong done 
shall be observed among nations and their gov- 
ernments that are observed among the indi- 
vidual citizens of civilized States. 


We have no quarrel with the German people. 
We have no feeling toward them but one of 
sympathy and friendship. It was not upon 
their impulse that their Government acted in 
entering this war. It was not with their previ- 
ous knowledge or approval. 


It was a war determined upon as wars used 
to be determined upon in the old, unhappy 
days’when peoples were nowhere consulted by 
their rulers and wars were provoked and 
waged in the interest of dynasties or of little 
groups of ambitious men who were accus- 
tomed to use their fellow men as pawns and 
tools. 


Self-governed nations do not fill their neigh- 
bor States with spies or set the course of 
intrigue to bring about some critical posture of 
affairs which will give them an opportunity to 
strike and make conquest. Such designs can 
be successfully worked only under cover and 
where no one has the right to ask questions. 


Partnership of Nations. 


Cunningly contrived plans of deception or 
aggression, carried, it may be, from generation 
to generation, can be worked out and kept 


from the light only within the privacy of 
courts or behind the carefully guarded confi- 
dences of a narrow and privileged class. 


They are, happily, impossible where public 
opinion commands and insists upon full in- 
formation concerning all the nation’s affairs. 
A steadfast concert for peace can never be 
maintained except by a partnership of demo- 
cratic nations. 


No autocratic government could be trusted 
to keep faith within it or observe its coven- 
ants. It must be a league of honor, a partner- 
ship of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals 
away. The plottings of inner circles who 
could plan what they would and render account 
to no one would be a corruption seated at 
its very heart. Only free peoples can hold 
their purpose and their honor steady to a 
common end and prefer the interests of man- 
kind to any narrow interest of their own. 


Does not every American feel that assur- 
ance has been added to our hope for the future 
peace of the world by the wonderful and 
heartening things that have been happening 
within the last few weeks in Russia? 


Russia Fighting for Freedom. 


Russia was known by those who knew it 
best to have been always in fact democratic 
at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, 
in all the intimate relationships of her people 
that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual 
attitude toward life. 





Autocracy that crowned the summit of her 
political structure, long as it had stood and 
terrible as was the reality of its power, was not 
in fact Russian in origin, in character or pur- 
pose; and now it has been shaken and the 
great, generous Russian people have been 
added in all their native majesty and might to 
the forces that are fighting for freedom in the 
world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit 
partner for a league of honor. 


One of the things that has served to con- 
vince us that the Prussian autocracy was not 
and could never be our friend is that from the 
very outset of the present war it has filled our 
unsuspecting communities and even our offices 
of government with spies and set criminal in- 
trigues everywhere afoot against our national 
unity of council, our peace within and without, 
our industries and our commerce. 


Indeed it is now evident that its spies were 
here even before the war began; and it is un- 
happily not a matter of conjecture but a fact 
proved in our courts of justice that the in- 
trigues which have more than once come peri- 
ously near to disturbing the peace and dislo- 
cating the industries of the country have been 
carried on at the instigation, with the support, 
and even under the personal direction of official 
agents of the Imperial Government accredited 
to the Government of the United States. 


Berlin Government Long Unfriendly. 


Even in checking these things and trying to 
extirpate them we have sought to put the most 
generous interpretation possible upon them be- 


cause we knew that their source lay, not in any 
hostile feeling or purpose of the German 
people toward us (who were, no doubt, as 
ignorant of them as we ourselves were) but 
only in the selfish designs of a government 
that did what it pleased and told its people 
nothing. But they have played their part in 
serving to convince us at last that that Gov- 
ernment entertains no real friendship for us 
and means to act against our peace and secur- 
ity at its convenience. That it means to stir 
up enemies against us at our very doors, the 
intercepted note to the German Minister at 
Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 


We are accepting this challenge of hostile 
purpose because we know that in such a Gov- 
ernment, following such methods, we can never 
have a friend; and that in the presence of its 
organized power, always lying in wait to ac- 
complish we know not what purpose, there 
can be no assured security for the democratic 
governments of the world. 


We are now about to accept gauge of battle 
with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if 
necessary, spend the whole force of the nation 
to check and nullify its pretensions and its 
power. Weare glad, now that we see the facts 
with no veil of false pretense about them, to 
fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world 
and for the liberation of its peoples, the Ger- 
man peoples included; for the rights of nations 
great and small and the privilege of men every- 
where to choose their way of life and of 
obedience. 


World Must Be Made Safe. 


The world must be made safe for democracy. 
Its ‘peace must be planted upon the trusted 
foundations of political liberty. 


We have no selfish ends to serve. We de- 
sire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no 
indemnities for ourselves, no material com- 
pensation for the sacrifices we shall freely 
make. We are but one of the champions of 
the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied 
when those rights have been as secure as the 
faith and the freedom of the nation can make 
them. 


Just because we fight without rancour and 
without selfish objects, seeking nothing for 
ourselves but what we shall wish to share with 
all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, con- 
duct our operations as belligerents without 
passion, and ourselves observe with proud 
punctilio the principles of right and of fair 
play we profess to be fighting for. 


I have said nothing of the governments 
allied with the Imperial Government of Ger- 
many because they have not made war upon 
us or challenged us to defend our right and our 
honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government 
has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorse- 
ment and acceptance of the reckless and law- 
less submarine warfare adopted now without 
disguise by the Imperial Government, and it 
has therefore not been possible for this Gov- 
ernment to receive Count Tarnowski, the Am- 
bassador recently accredited to this Govern- 
ment by the Imperial and Royal Government 


of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has 
not actually engaged in warfare against citi- 
zens of the United States on the seas, and I 
take the liberty, for the present at least,’ of 
postponing a discussion of our relations with 
the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war 
only where we are clearly forced into it be- 
cause there are no other means of defending 
our rights. 


A Government Running Amuck. 


It will be all the easier for us to conduct our- 
selves as belligerents in a high spirit of right 
and fairness because we act without animus, 
not in enmity toward a people nor with the 
desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon 
them, but only in armed opposition to an irre- 
sponsible Government which has thrown aside 
all considerations of humanity and of right and 
is running amuck. 


We are, let me say again, the sincere friends 
of the German people, and shall desire nothing 
so much as the early re-establishment of inti- 
mate relations of mutual advantage between 
us—however hard it may be for them, for the 
time being, to believe that this is spoken from 
our hearts. We have borne with their present 
Government through all these bitter months 
because of that friendship—exercising a pa- 
tience and forbearance which would otherwise 
have been impossible. 


We shall, happily, still have an opportunity 
to prove that friendship in our daily attitude 
and actions toward the millions of men and 
women of German birth and native sympathy 


who live among us and share our life, and 
we shall be proud to prove it toward all who 
are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the 
Government in the hour of test. They are, 
most of them, as true and loyal Americans as 
if they had never known any other fealty or 
allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with 
us in rebuking and restraining the few who 
may be of a different mind and purpose. 


Disloyalty to be Repressed. 


If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt 
with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, 
if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here 
and there and without countenance except 
from a lawless and malignant few. 


It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gen- 
tlemen of the Congress, which I have per- 
formed in thus addressing you. There are, it 
may be, many months of fiery trial and sacri- 
fice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead 
this great, peaceful people into war, into the 
most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civili- 
zation itself seeming to be in the balance. But 
the right is more precious than peace, and we 
shall fight for the things which we have always 
carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for 
the right of those who submit to authority to 
have a voice in their own governments, for 
the rights and liberties of small nations for a 
universal dominion of right by such a concert 
of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety 
to all nations and make the world itself at last 
free. 


To such a task we can dedicate our lives and 
our fortunes, everything that we are and every- 
thing that we have, with the pride of those who 
know that the day has come when America is 
privileged to spend her blood and her might 
for the principles that gave her birth and 
happiness and the peace which she has treas- 
ured. God helping her, she can do no other. 


PRINTED BY 
A. L. RUSSELL.INC. 
24 STONE ST.,N, Y. 


AND 


NET PROCEEDS DIVIDED 
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